David Stark - Zarkonnen
@zarkonnen.bsky.social
I make games about bad things happening to tiny simulated people and help run the Zurich gamedev community. He/him. Website: https://zarkonnen.com/ Games: https://zarkonnen.itch.io/ Game Hub: https://www.swissgamehub.com/
the stupid thing was: the consumer games press DID have unethical marketing mouthpiece relationships with the industry. the e3 / spike tv / actiblizz / doritogate conglomerate and the payola-dominated masculine corporate culture had a stranglehold on what got made and how it could be discussed --
AI bros taking up smoking because AI will cure cancer:
You know, the thing is, I had drafted this piece a month ago, and then never published it, because I thought maybe it was too mean.
Katsuhiro Otomo's "Cannon Fodder" short film was a big inspiration for Cannon Keep!
One of the small things I love about Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is that the manual has a list of the SF novels they read for inspiration at the back. More games should come with background reading lists! So, #gamedev people: what's the background reading/watching for your game? I'm curious.
Starting to integrate the Quantitative Slime Dynamics into Biomechanoid Repair Shop. #gamedev -> zarkonnen.com/biomech
I have decided to become a full on AI accelerationist because the apocalypse where we choose to turn over our thinking to overgrown statistical models of our past utterances controlled by actual supervillains promises to be at least more entertaining than the already scheduled climate one.
Got bit by a mosquito. Awkwardly try to kill it while holding my phone. Slap it against the screen of my phone. Try to see if I got it, see a mosquito on the phone screen. But it's a picture of one, accompanying a news article about mosquitoes in Switzerland. I... digitized a mosquito?
I like that order of operations: prove the tone and narrative identity first, then start asking which mechanics actually reinforce it. It’s a lot easier to judge a system when you already know what experience the system is supposed to create.
The problem with taking the newest round of #AI threat warnings seriously is that it's less "the boy who cried wolf" and more "the boy who cried wolf and also owns a wolf factory".
If you showed up at Defcon and gave talk about how your autonomous malware did something unexpected and damaged someone else's computers, the first question from the audience would be "Why are you so shit at making secure sandboxes?" It wouldn't be "How are you so awesome at making hacking tools?"
Silvery-cheeked Hornbill, who was honking every eight seconds 🪶🐡
Just played through this demo, which pleasantly reminded me of doing digital electronics at university 20 years ago.
Metaroot @metaroot.bsky.social · last mo.🚦 The If Red Then Stop demo is now live on Steam! After our playtest, 2,400+ people filled out the feedback form, which honestly blew us away. The Kerzoven team used it to improve the game and add two new levels for the demo. Try it now: https://bit.ly/4gYws2m
Woke up in the middle of the night from a dream of "what if gamescom was an action adventure where you fight smugglers on riverboats instead of a series of meetings and mixers." Pretty cool, actually. Bring spare socks.
For Reasons, my dinner tonight consisted of a manhattan and some ritz crackers. Am I a character in a noir novel?
Why stop at fuzzy pink handcuffs when it comes to fuzzy pink trappings of state power? Where are the fuzzy pink gavels and guillotines?
It's museum night in #Zurich today and so I went to the moulage (medical wax replica) museum for Biomechanoid Repair Shop research purposes. Very interesting historically but now I feel very itchy.
The truly worrying thing about "jail for mother for one thousand years" is that it's jail, not prison. Mother never gets her day in court.
@zarkonnen.bsky.social will show how mockups can help when choosing your next game project, while Jasmin Oestreicher & Melvin Frank from @sidekickpublishing.bsky.social dive into game marketing, streamability and creating games that resonate and sell.
September is looking pretty busy at the Hub! Come by to draw, talk games, test what people are working on, join the Pub Quiz or simply hang out with the community. Have a look at what’s coming up and see you at the Hub! ❤️
Relatedly, if a very movie-specific genie allowed me three wishes to fund three projects, I would go for: ⚫ Guillermo del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness ⚫ A big-budget but properly weird Blindsight ⚫ An animated show of the Locked Tomb series with all the Akira-style body horror stuff
In a better timeline, Blindsight would have gotten all the eyeballs that The Three Body Problem got.
Every time outlets publish the chat logs of people who committed violence or suicide after talking to AI I am, like, so consumed with rage and disgust I feel physically sick. The people making these things should never get a good night's sleep again in their lives
Mother Jones@motherjones.com · 2mo agoThe role of ChatGPT went far beyond providing tactical tips in the final hours before the mass shooting. The shooter messaged with ChatGPT more than 6,600 times over 12 months—including dozens of conversations revealing he was desperate, focused on extremist violence, and suicidal.
Resolving everything with a gunfight is just as stupid and unrealistic as resolving everything with a collectible card game, yet movies are considered serious and Yu-Gi-Oh! isn't. #writing
"Surplus value provided to customers is unrealized profits." - modern CEOs
